I don't mind continuing the hijack. Besides, one could argue that the subject is "safety lighting - how much is too much".
If you go through the actual Hurt Report (almost 500 pages, and a lot of it is pretty dry), there is no actual recommendation of daytime highbeam headlamp use. They do recognize that there is an argument for highbeam use, but they did not study or quantify it, nor did they conclude that it is/was a good idea. At the time of the study, bikes had only recently been required to have headlamps lit at all times from the factory, so they were comparing headlamp use vs non-use only.
The highbeam use advocates drew the conclusion that if a headlight helps make the bike visible, a highbeam must make it more visible. It many ways, that seems reasonable, but there are no studies, reports nor statistics to back that conclusion. There is evidence that it is not always so much of a question of whether the bike was seen, but rather a question of whether the distance and approach speed were correctly estimated by the observing traffic. Unfortunately, highbeams can and do make those calculations more difficult, and may increase the risks rather than reducing them.
Again, this is relevant particularly because Steve started this thread asking for options to reduce the offensiveness of his super-bright rear safety light. It is good to be visible, but there is a limit beyond which more harm than benefit is achieved. This is a simple concept. Drawing that line between enough of a good thing and too much (morphing the good thing into a bad thing) is something each of us is called to do on a regular basis in a wide variety of situations.
